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North Korea tests another nuke...; ?
Topic Started: May 25 2009, 02:31 AM (1,385 Views)
Dax
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Israel [Sel Appa
 
,26 May 2009 20.09.09] Full-scale nuclear war is not necessarily going to happen. I forget what book it is in, but NK is simply pursuing the "mouse that roared" tactic. Meaning that they're building a nuke to get attention, not to actually use it.

The book actually may be called The Mouse That Roared...

No, nuclear war might not necessarily happen, but is that a chance you're willing to take? Because I'm not, and I'm under the assumption that most world leaders also aren't, or else North Korea would be a parking lot at the moment.
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It's not going to happen. North Korea's five nukes vs. the world's 10000+? Nuclear war alright.
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Dax
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North Korea launches one and we have nuclear war. Point blank. Not to mention who would fire back.
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United States [Sel]
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That's like saying someone bombs someone and it instantly becomes war.
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zzskylar
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,26 May 2009 20.28.15]That's like saying someone bombs someone and it instantly becomes war.

PRIME EXAMPLE
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drops one bomb*
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zzBugs
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I don't think it would end up in full scale war, should North Korea launch a nuke...at probably any of its neighbors.

The thing with Korea, is they seem to be wasting time just trying to set one off. They aren't doing what Iran is doing, and just making nuclear material, to a fuller extent. We're not talking about nuclear holocaust here, if North Korea, launched even maybe ten missiles at say Japan or Russia, except for those who actually end up in it. And probably the fallout afterward. (Note: The smoking gun that helped determine that North Korea did this most recent one, was somethin to do with xenon that ended up in Canadas air).

Anyhow. North Korea wouldn't have the same capability as Russia at returning fire to the US. Unless North Korea plans to ship some of its nukes to some distant island, close to America. And unless North Korea somehow makes it look like America nuked Russia or China, there is no way it'd be full out nuke war. Because from what is known, and probably assumed to be unknown, NK has no real producing capability. But at the same time, one bomb that looks like America...COULD start a war.
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zzBugs
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,26 May 2009 21.52.03]
Israel [Sel Appa
 
,26 May 2009 20.28.15]That's like saying someone bombs someone and it instantly becomes war.

PRIME EXAMPLE

The difference being, America figured it wasn't that big a deal, because Georgia can't fire nukes, and the Russians didn't need to. Might as well be the "bigger person"
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zzskylar
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,26 May 2009 22.43.47] drops one bomb*

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*this bomb being on a micro scale
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Greece (TheOne)
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I think some of you are forgetting the most important thing..does North Korea actually have the capability to launch a nuclear armed missile?
Yes, they have the missiles that put it's neighbours in range.
But are they capable of putting together a warhead, loading it onto the missile, and having that missile aim properly? It's not as simple as bolting a few things here and there.

And as for where the money is coming from, anyone ever thought that China might be financing them in some way?

I guess the drug trade for them is pretty big though, they even sent a freighter loaded with drugs(cocaine or ecstasy I think) to Australia once that was intercepted and sunk by the RAAF.
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zzgoodie
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Hubris and I suspect it may come down to war.
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China has a motive to finance them to keep the US occupied, but it also runs the risk of Japan re-militarizing and going nuclear and Korea going nuclear.
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http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/05...is-north-korea/

Quote:
 
Amid all the Western panic at the prospect of North Korea’s Kim Jong-il, the hereditary Communist monarch of the Hermit Kingdom, wielding a nuclear arsenal, we would be well-advised to take a chill pill, as Kim Sunn-joo – a Korean travel agent cited in this piece on the "crisis" – advises:

"I see this test as North Korea’s marketing strategy. They just seem to be playing games. I wouldn’t say that South Korea is completely free of danger, but I don’t think we are any more in danger than we were before. People here are used to these kinds of threats.”

Okay, so they’re playing games, but what kind of games – and what is the prize?

There are two theories about this. The first is that the North Koreans are desperate to normalize relations with the West, insofar as the most secretive, repressive, and downright loopy neo-Stalinist regime on earth can hope to achieve some semblance of normality.

Essential to understanding the comic-opera belligerence of the North Korean regime is the fact that the Korean War never ended: a truce was declared, but the formalities of ending the conflict have never been performed. South Korea refused to sign the Korean War Armistice Agreement, and the two sides are technically still at war, after all these years.

To the North Koreans, who are especially prickly and sensitive when it comes to matters of "face," this is a living issue, one that has a definite effect on their behavior in the present. Any U.S. president who entertains the idea of resolving the ongoing series of crises that erupt on the Korean peninsula with clock-like regularity has to be prepared to revisit this entire issue of the war that never officially ended.

It is clear that the Korean question, if it is to be resolved, cannot be approached militarily. No one, not even the nuttiest neocon, contemplates attacking the North and effecting "regime change." This leaves negotiations, but the problem here is twofold.

First, the U.S. has insisted on dragging other nations into the talks, so that we have the so-called Six-Party Talks: the North, the South, the Japanese, the Chinese, the Russians, and the U.S. Predictably, however, these talks have gone nowhere fast, partially because the North insists on dealing directly with its real antagonists, who are still occupying South Korea after all this time. Pyongyang wants to deal directly with Washington, and one can hardly blame them: after all, the current president of the U.S. has declared that he’ll talk directly to the Iranians, a step that no U.S. chief executive has taken since U.S.-Iranian relations were broken off in the Carter years. Why not the North Koreans? After all, Kim Jong-il is no crazier than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – or, at least, it’s a horse race.

Secondly, a new factor has recently entered the equation, and that is the apparent incapacity of Kim Jong-il, 66, said to have suffered a stroke last August. These reports call into question his role in policymaking decisions and raise the issue of just who is in control of North Korea’s nuclear program. You can’t negotiate if there’s no one to negotiate with.

Which brings us to the second theory about why Pyongyang is popping up like a grotesque jack-in-the-box, every few months, with a new outrage against international order: it’s all about internal North Korean politics and the question of who will succeed Kim Jong-il as the next "Dear Leader." To understand what may be going on inside the notoriously closed society of North Korea, it is necessary to give a little context.

The North Korean regime was created by the Soviet Union after its armies "liberated" the North from Japanese occupation at the end of World War II. There weren’t a whole lot of Communists who lived in the North – the membership of the official Communist Party was largely confined to the southern, urban regions – and the Soviets had to make do. The regime and the Communist (Workers) Party of North Korea were basically cobbled together out of a number of various and often competing communist organizations, some with roots in China, others with roots in the South, and others coming directly from the Soviet Union as translators and "advisers." A fourth group, the smallest, was associated with the future "Great Leader" Kim Il-sung’s Manchurian guerrilla campaign against the Japanese, which eventually was defeated. Kim Il-sung fled to the Soviet Union until he arrived back in his home country via a Soviet destroyer and was installed in power by the Red Army.

These four factions balanced each other out in the early years of the regime, when the cult of personality around Kim Il-Sung was in its infancy and had yet to tighten its grip on the party and the nation. This rough parity was upset, however, in 1956, when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev launched an ideological "reevaluation" of the Stalin years at the CPSU’s 20th Party Congress. His famous speech denouncing Stalin’s crimes sent shock waves through the international communist movement. The Khrushchevite critique of Stalin could be easily applied to the cult that was developing around Kim Il-sung, and the remnants of the Soviet and Chinese factions within the North Korean Workers Party took the opportunity to raise their heads. At a meeting of the party cadres, Yun Kong-hum, a member of the Soviet faction, rose to give a speech attacking the Kim Il-sung personality cult. The leadership, however, was prepared: he was met with a chorus of jeering, and his words were lost in the tumult. Shortly after the meeting, he and his factional cohorts fled to China. Those who stayed behind were purged from their party positions, and a great many were taken out and shot.

It was at this point that the North Koreans began to go their own way and veer out of the Sino-Soviet orbit. Convinced that Beijing and Moscow were trying to control events in North Korea, Kim Il-sung began to play a delicate balancing act, resisting pressure from his Communist allies to moderate his policies and subtly playing off one against the other. This strategy was greatly facilitated by the impending Sino-Soviet split, which began to go public in 1957.

The idea was to isolate North Korea from "foreign" influences, namely the Soviets and later the Chinese, both of whose supporters within the North Korean Workers Party were systematically purged, imprisoned, and executed over the years. Yet there was a problem with this strategy, embodied in Juche, roughly translated as "self-reliance": the country was and is desperately poor, and this policy of self-isolation only exacerbated a situation that has, today, become nearly intolerable.

When Khrushchev greatly reduced Soviet aid to Pyongyang – which amounted to around 30 percent of the government’s gross receipts – the country plummeted into an economic free-fall from which it never really recovered. Today, North Korea teeters on the brink of famine, which has already claimed many thousands of lives, and the people are literally eating the bark off of trees.

Now, every regime, no matter how tyrannical, depends to a large extent on the consent of the people. What prevents them from rising up and overthrowing their oppressors is the conviction that they’re being protected from a much greater danger, and, in North Korea’s case, it’s the bugaboo of foreign occupation. Draconian economic sanctions imposed by the West reinforce this general impression and give the regime’s insistence that the Americans and South Koreans are about to invade enough credibility to increase the public’s tolerance of Kim Jong-il’s antics.

This is what gives President Barack Obama’s recent comments on the latest crisis a darkly humorous tone. He said that the world has got to "stand up to North Korea." The truth, however, from a North Korean perspective, is precisely the opposite: in their view, it is North Korea that is standing up to the world. So much of the Western commentary on the North Korean issue notes that the nuclear test generated firepower equivalent to the blasts that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki – acts carried out by the United States against a prostrate Japan. It is certainly not lost on the North Koreans that the U.S. could just as easily rationalize a similar attack on yet another nation of yellow-skinned people.

In spite of all the hysteria surrounding North Korea’s nukes, and the rather perfervid and technically dubious assertions that they’re capable of launching a ballistic missile attack on Alaska, or even Los Angeles, the reality is that we represent more of a credible threat to them than they could ever hope to mount against us. North Korea’s nuclear weapons program is primitive, and they couldn’t construct a nuclear weapon that is stable and usable for years to come, if ever. We, however, could wipe them off the map, if we so chose, and therein lies the key to understanding their crazed course.

They are like those suicide bombers who face an enemy they cannot possibly hope to defeat in conventional warfare, yet there is a difference: Pyongyang must convince us that they are ready, willing, and able to strike, without actually doing so, because a military conflict would almost certainly deprive them of power. However, in order to keep that power, they must convince the populace that they are surrounded by enemies who are just about ready to invade. The war threat keeps the population in line and effectively prevents any repetition of the 1956 factional rebellion that openly challenged the Juche regime.

So what does the West do? After all, who knows what crazed course Kim Jong-il will take? He seems erratic, at best, and, what’s more, there seems to be a new faction arising in the military, hardliners who want no compromise with the West and are prepared to go to war if that’s what it takes to maintain the stability of the regime.

The only rational policy is to avoid provocations at all costs. Nothing justifies going to war, and it is unlikely that the North Koreans are so completely out of it that they’ll launch a first strike on the South – which would incapacitate the entire Korean peninsula. A strike at Japan, which the Japanese greatly – and rightly – fear is probably not in the cards, either, although I wouldn’t rule it out entirely. What’s more probable, however, is a Chernobyl-type nuclear accident involving the North’s nuclear facilities. Their program is primitive and their scientific prowess less than reassuring. This is a disaster just waiting to happen – which is one good reason why some sort of rapprochement is imperative.

The West, however, holds a trump card that requires no action on their part, and that is the inherent instability of the regime. No matter how much it inveighs against the "Western plot" against North Korea’s independence and economic well-being, it is the regime itself that is the real obstacle to the nation’s development. North Korea is a giant pressure cooker just waiting to go off, and, left alone, it will explode. It’s only a matter of time.

The explosion, when it comes, as it did in East Germany and the rest of the Soviet bloc, will bring down the heirs of Kim Il-sung and toss the regime into the dustbin of history. The social chaos that ensues will naturally spill over into the South, as well as China, and the repercussions will be severe – but far less life-threatening than a military conflict, which will plunge the entire region into an abyss it will take many years to climb out of.

The U.S., under Bush, consistently blocked attempts by the North and the South to come to some kind of accommodation. Our policies have clashed with the deeply ingrained nationalism of the Korean people, and the history of our collaboration with despotic Southern rulers is a long and shameful one. Pressure on the regime to give up its nuclear program only yields defiance. The best we can do is wait and let nature – in the form of a natural human resistance to intolerable conditions of privation and repression – take its course.
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Royis
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What nation has the second largest special ops force in the world?

A. Russia
B. China
C. North Korea
D. Great Britain.

Answer- North Korea
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Uzbekistan [Royaissamany
 
,27 May 2009 08.02.39] What nation has the second largest special ops force in the world?

A. Russia
B. China
C. North Korea
D. Great Britain.

Answer- North Korea

And it's designed entirely to infiltrate the South's defenses and disrupt normal lines of combat, supply, communication...
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Mexico (Hubris)
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Yes, NK's "Special Ops" aren't the same as Western or even Chinese Special Ops.

They're all trained for the total manipulation and destruction of mostly the following -

Communication Lines (Including Internet)
Supply Capability
Enemy Civilian Morale

The thing that's funny is so many people disagreed with me before that a War in our current state of affairs would start off with our asses being handed to us there, and I still believe it'll happen like that.

Asses whooped, we find a holding ground, but start to wear down due to numbers game. (Not enough manpower on our side, as it's all being used elsewhere).

So, who knows - but yay... FINALLY.. North Korea grew balls. (That, or found the perfect US President to fuck with).
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,27 May 2009 12.04.57] or found the perfect US President to fuck with).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_of_Evil
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_North_Korean_nuclear_test
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_North_Korean_missile_test
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No nuclear war, if North Korea employed the nuclear option. Firstly, you can't have a nuclear war without combatants, and the North has no ally with an arsenal.

Secondly, it makes no sense to retaliate against North Korea with Nuclear arms. Since the goal of a war against the DPRK would be to eliminate the highly unfavorable political regime, I would think that leaders would not employ nuclear retaliation. In fact, it's not even an option. The only acceptable North Korean targets are major cities (Countervalue), and that means the ROK and PRC get fallout, plus you give North Korea a Just Cause for a guerrilla war against anyone the regime pleases (assuming it survived the strike).

Kim is a krazy. With a "k." Right now, if I was one of Obama's military advisers, I'd put a limited military option in the cards. Secondly, hardball diplomacy to eliminate the North Korean economy to the fullest.

*"The no money no nukes suggestion:" I think it's BS that North Korea can't maintain it's NBC (Nuclear Biological Chemical) Arsenal bleeding money. Hell, I think they can keep up their conventional forces too, even with the "Plan B." You can force people to work and extract resources at gunpoint. The DPRK has those guns. That's a rather extreme example but still, I think North Korea maintains the resources to at least slow the decay of their military.

However, by 2020 everything in the DPRK's military will be vastly reduced in effectiveness even from today assuming existing plans from the military powers are carried out.

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Royis
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We are doomed if we invade North Korea, because of one reason-

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,27 May 2009 22.51.42] We are doomed if we invade North Korea, because of one reason

We're screwed!


X: Good points, but an economy in a terminal downward spiral will mean that the regime will find it increasingly difficult to hold on to power. There's a point at which the regime will find it impossible to survive. Remember, if 10% of your population is in your military then the chances are they know someone who was shipped off to a labour camp. The more people you force to work, the more it saps morale and undermines support for the regime from the organisation on which it depends for holding on to power: the army.

Without support from the Army, Kim Jong Il couldn't hold on to power. He needs to keep them on side.

There are rumours floating around about the nuke/missile tests being part of a leadership struggle in light of Kim's ailing health. The military chiefs will play a large part in the succession, and whoever takes over will require their support.
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You know, that's kinda interesting. But my personal take on this is that North Korea doesn't really care what the rest of the world thinks. Guys, let's think about the world of Nineteen Eighty-four for a little bit. It was remarked that perhaps there was no war going on at all, but rather the State was self-inflicting damages to further enslave its population. Similarly, isn't it somewhat interesting that this posturing by the North Korean government is not being followed up by any serious military buildups internationally, other than the rebooting of its nuclear programme? The talk of the armistice being null and void or whatever jargon is just an act. The North isn't going to invade the South. With that in mind, what if North Korea is not trying to guard from international pressures but instead internal pressures [let's face it, the leader isn't getting any healthier] in an attempt to maintain control? I just think it's interesting that we speak of Orwellian states only existing in a dystopia or far-fetched reality, when in fact it's been in North Korea this whole time.
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Kim Jong-Il is a fuckin' poser, North Korea has an army of starvin' peasants and their economy is abysmal. Put simply Kim Jong-Il is a enormous piece of shit layin' upon the poor people and killin'em with his shitiness. He's just flexin' what little muscle he has to get the other nations of the world to pay attention to him, like a little kid or somethin'.
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,27 May 2009 16.35.19] No nuclear war, if North Korea employed the nuclear option. Firstly, you can't have a nuclear war without combatants, and the North has no ally with an arsenal.

China. I'd say even the Russians to an extent.
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,27 May 2009 20.30.06] You know, that's kinda interesting. But my personal take on this is that North Korea doesn't really care what the rest of the world thinks. Guys, let's think about the world of Nineteen Eighty-four for a little bit. It was remarked that perhaps there was no war going on at all, but rather the State was self-inflicting damages to further enslave its population. Similarly, isn't it somewhat interesting that this posturing by the North Korean government is not being followed up by any serious military buildups internationally, other than the rebooting of its nuclear programme? The talk of the armistice being null and void or whatever jargon is just an act. The North isn't going to invade the South. With that in mind, what if North Korea is not trying to guard from international pressures but instead internal pressures [let's face it, the leader isn't getting any healthier] in an attempt to maintain control? I just think it's interesting that we speak of Orwellian states only existing in a dystopia or far-fetched reality, when in fact it's been in North Korea this whole time.

I think you're spot on, here.

There has been a recent conventional military buildup in the North, but I suspect a bunch of the new soldiers (the special forces soldiers, especially) are intended more for domestic policing than anything else.
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Whoever keeps putting this in Debate Hall, it isn't a debate.

It may have a few elements of debate, but there's no reason to put it there IMO.
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Kyrgyzstan [Skylar
 
,27 May 2009 20.30.06] You know, that's kinda interesting. But my personal take on this is that North Korea doesn't really care what the rest of the world thinks. Guys, let's think about the world of Nineteen Eighty-four for a little bit. It was remarked that perhaps there was no war going on at all, but rather the State was self-inflicting damages to further enslave its population. Similarly, isn't it somewhat interesting that this posturing by the North Korean government is not being followed up by any serious military buildups internationally, other than the rebooting of its nuclear programme? The talk of the armistice being null and void or whatever jargon is just an act. The North isn't going to invade the South. With that in mind, what if North Korea is not trying to guard from international pressures but instead internal pressures [let's face it, the leader isn't getting any healthier] in an attempt to maintain control? I just think it's interesting that we speak of Orwellian states only existing in a dystopia or far-fetched reality, when in fact it's been in North Korea this whole time.

It's a brilliant almost perfect comparison.
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NORTH Korea has abandoned the truce that ended the Korean War and warned it could launch a military attack on the South, two days after testing an atomic bomb for the second time.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25549902-401,00.html
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WAR!!!
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A good article in the Times. Kind of reminds me of my plan to invade North Korea as Japan. Espically when they talk about appointing his son as a successor.

North Korea's nuclear message to Kim Jong Il's own hardliners
This was a show of weakness, not of strength

When a man walks down the street firing a gun over your head, it is difficult not take it personally. When a dictator with a million-strong army and a well documented dislike for the “imperialist aggressors” of the West, lets off a nuclear weapon, it feels much the same. This sentiment informed foreign reaction to North Korea's nuclear test yesterday, from Washington to Tokyo to Helsinki: how dare he do this to us?

“North Korea's attempts to develop nuclear weapons, as well as its ballistic missile programme, constitute a threat to international peace and security,” President Obama said. But there is another way of thinking about North Korea and its dictator, Kim Jong Il, just as there is about the armed loser who shoots up the neighbourhood. It's not about us at all - it's about him.

The popular view of Mr Kim, as a megalomaniac poised to rain fiery death on all who displease him, is worse than a misunderstanding - it plays into his hands. Everything he does, all his threats and bluster, his merciless oppression of his own people, and the elaborately ludicrous personality cult around him, springs not from strength, but from profound and irremediable weakness.

Mr Kim leads the last Stalinist dictatorship in the world. He makes the Cubans and Vietnamese look like thrusting innovators. Politically, he has been cut off by the tide and is sitting on a sandbank without a life jacket, watching the waves rise.

Even the best-equipped spies cannot see the workings of North Korea's internal politics, but there are good reasons for believing that the 67-year old Mr Kim is more than usually vulnerable at present. We know with some certainty that he was gravely ill last summer, with something like a stroke. Now there are signs that he is preparing one of his three sons to succeed him.

Hereditary successions in oppressive monarchies are often moments of uncertainty, when courtiers compete to be more on-message, and when the old king feels most susceptible and afraid. Yesterday's test may have been a calculated attempt to raise the stakes in negotiations with the new US Administration - or it may have been Mr Kim's effort to win favour with his own military hardliners, the only people who can guarantee his family's hold on power.

Confrontation of the kind in which North Korea specialises is the last refuge of the politically bankrupt - but it is a failure of imagination to to award Mr Kim the domestic prestige that he seeks. Any man with a gun is dangerous, but he is easier to deal with if his weakness is recognised and not mistaken for strength.

Richard Lloyd Parry is Asia editor


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Could that loud bang be North Korea saying 'nice to meet you, President Obama'?

Churchill called Stalin’s Russia “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”. Kim Jong Il’s North Korea is much the same, minus the transparency.

Nominally the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is ruled by the Workers’ Party of Korea. Yet the party’s Central Committee seems not to have met in the 15 years since the “Great Leader”, Kim Il Sung, died in 1994. The Politburo is even more atrophied — an ever-shrinking group of gerontocrats.

So who’s in charge? Though he is increasingly beholden to the military, the answer is: Kim Jong Il. A micromanager and exponent of the midnight phone call, the “Dear Leader” has hitherto ruled mainly via a kitchen cabinet of cronies. Foremost is his brother-in-law Jang Song Taek, who, having returned from a brief stay in the wilderness, is now constantly at Mr Kim’s side.

There is a Cabinet, headed by Kim Yong Il (no relation) and which cuts little ice. Formal and real rank may diverge. Thus the Foreign Minister, Pak Ui Chun, is mainly a meeter-and-greeter. The real power rests with his nominal deputy, Kang Sok Ju — whom Christopher Hill, the energetic former US pointman on North Korea, apparently never met.

Mere civilians have no say over what really matters: the Korean People’s Army, the world’s fifth-largest. Above the Cabinet is the National Defence Commission, the country’s top executive body. Last month North Korea’s rubber-stamp parliament — it meets for only one day a year — saw the National Defence Commission enlarged. Mr Jang is among the new members, most of whom are hardline generals — and appear to be calling the shots at the moment.

All this looks an effort, not before time, to institutionalise power in case Mr Kim — who is back after last year’s illness, but not looking at all well, — again becomes incapacitated, perhaps fatally. Rather than being a collective leadership, the National Defence Commission will hold the fort while delicate manoeuvres continue to choose an heir.

Successions are the Achilles’ heel of tyrannies. The Dear Leader’s complex marital history makes it risky to choose a dauphin, lest this prompts rivals to plot. Yet not to choose one is riskier still.

North Korea’s current hyper-militancy, even by its own standards, may be frantic barking to keep the world at bay at a vulnerable time while a successor is picked. If we satisfy ourselves with passing toothless but necessary UN resolutions, we may get more sense from Pyongyang once the dust has settled. Or perhaps the hawks really mean it. But spitting at everyone is no real long-term policy, especially for a failed state that needs aid to avert the threat of famine.

Some claim all this banging is North Korea’s crude way of knocking on our door. I wonder. If reason prevails at all there, surely they see that, with President Obama, the door is open. Other US foes, such as Cuba, are grasping the chance. If North Korea is not, one fears that bellicosity is by now so hardwired into the leadership’s thinking that it cannot conceive, or trust, any other way.

Some can. Kim Jong Il’s eldest son, Kim Jong Nam, whose unprepossessing looks belie a sharp mind, has been sounding oddly off-message of late, telling the Japanese press that he understands Tokyo’s security concerns over April’s big rocket.

In quasi-exile in Macau, Kim Jong Nam looks out of the running as a successor. Or is he repositioning himself as head of the sensible party? If and when China finally loses patience with the nest of vipers it has nurtured for too long in North Korea, Kim Jong Nam might just be the man to whom they turn.

Aidan Foster-Carter is Honorary Senior Research Fellow in sociology and modern Korea, University of Leeds


[align=center]Head of State (President): Moncef Marzouki (Congress for the Republic)
Head of Government (Prime Minister): Hamadi Jebali (Ennahda)
Population: 10.6 Million (2012 est.)
GDP (Real): $44bn (2012 est.)
Organizations: Arab League (AL), Arab Maghreb Union (AMU), African Union (AU), International Criminal Court (ICC), International Monetary Fund (IMF,) Non Aligned Movement (NAM), United Nations (UN) & World Trade Organisation (WTO).
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zzLyly
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Kyrgyzstan [Skylar
 
,27 May 2009 19.30.06] You know, that's kinda interesting. But my personal take on this is that North Korea doesn't really care what the rest of the world thinks. Guys, let's think about the world of Nineteen Eighty-four for a little bit. It was remarked that perhaps there was no war going on at all, but rather the State was self-inflicting damages to further enslave its population. Similarly, isn't it somewhat interesting that this posturing by the North Korean government is not being followed up by any serious military buildups internationally, other than the rebooting of its nuclear programme? The talk of the armistice being null and void or whatever jargon is just an act. The North isn't going to invade the South. With that in mind, what if North Korea is not trying to guard from international pressures but instead internal pressures [let's face it, the leader isn't getting any healthier] in an attempt to maintain control? I just think it's interesting that we speak of Orwellian states only existing in a dystopia or far-fetched reality, when in fact it's been in North Korea this whole time.

That's about what I've always thought, but I've never thought of that comparison to 1984.
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North Korea can afford this because of trade deals it has with foreign nations that sell now get the cash later.

In any case I know how to stop North Korea we send in the A team.XD
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China wouldn't shed any radioactive tears over North Korean failure, TheOne. It's nice for the PRC to have a buffer state, but, honestly, what's stopping China from just declaring the DPRK a farce and setting up a less troublesome one? Nuking anyone over the odd kid in the corner isn't smart, no matter what America did the odd kid.

Ditto on Russia, only Russia sees even less geopolitical advantage to North Korea's existence (Russia can set into motion other distractions to the USA and NATO with ease).
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,28 May 2009 03.09.21] NORTH Korea has abandoned the truce that ended the Korean War and warned it could launch a military attack on the South, two days after testing an atomic bomb for the second time.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25549902-401,00.html

Perhaps this is Obama's "6 month test"
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Speaking of North Korea, has anyone seen ours? It's been a couple of weeks since the last post I recall seeing. I miss my foil and raison d'etre!
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And to think we kicked my friend out of North Korea.
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Speaking of missing people, what ever happened to Kyang?
I'm amused easily by childish things.
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Kyrgyzstan [Skylar
 
,29 May 2009 16.08.30] Speaking of missing people, what ever happened to Kyang?

He's running China for real now I think. ;)
[align=center]Head of State (President): Moncef Marzouki (Congress for the Republic)
Head of Government (Prime Minister): Hamadi Jebali (Ennahda)
Population: 10.6 Million (2012 est.)
GDP (Real): $44bn (2012 est.)
Organizations: Arab League (AL), Arab Maghreb Union (AMU), African Union (AU), International Criminal Court (ICC), International Monetary Fund (IMF,) Non Aligned Movement (NAM), United Nations (UN) & World Trade Organisation (WTO).
Strained Relations/War: Saudi Arabia, Libya and Israel /None

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,29 May 2009 15.46.28] And to think we kicked my friend out of North Korea.

Yep. If only Sels Friends could do everything....
[align=center]Head of State (President): Moncef Marzouki (Congress for the Republic)
Head of Government (Prime Minister): Hamadi Jebali (Ennahda)
Population: 10.6 Million (2012 est.)
GDP (Real): $44bn (2012 est.)
Organizations: Arab League (AL), Arab Maghreb Union (AMU), African Union (AU), International Criminal Court (ICC), International Monetary Fund (IMF,) Non Aligned Movement (NAM), United Nations (UN) & World Trade Organisation (WTO).
Strained Relations/War: Saudi Arabia, Libya and Israel /None

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J.B. Hemlock
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Well, you could always just give North Korea to me to run.

(Hee-hee-hee!)

I'd be fair! It'd be kind of like Stok with China and Taiwan...

(Hee-hee-hee!)
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,29 May 2009 17.33.11] And to think we kicked my friend out of North Korea.

Well, he didn't have a much better track record.
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